1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sugar cane harvester, and, more particularly, to harvesters of the type that process multiple rows.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the harvesting of sugar cane one of the essential elements of the apparatus is a base cutter. This is the component that severs the stalk to be carried by the harvester into a sequence of processing steps. It is desirable in the utilization of the base cutter to cut the sugar cane stalks as close to the ground as possible without choking the root and the ground. Owing to the variations in terrain and soil composition it is necessary to adjust the height of the base cutter to an optimal height during field operation. A number of prior approaches have utilized various devices to control the height of the base cutter. These may take the form of optical position sensors and other approaches known in the art.
The problem of adjusting base cutter height is made more challenging when the harvester is processing multiple rows of sugar cane stalks in order to gain productivity. Currently, two rows of sugar cane stalks are proposed to be processed but it is contemplated that additional rows may be processed by future machines. With such multiple row processing, the instantaneous adjustment of the base cutter may dynamically vary during processing in the field and the height of one of the base cutters will not necessarily be the height of the other. Previous attempts have been made to adjust the height but they involve systems that are either overly complicated or simply approximate the desired base cutter height. What desired in the art, therefore, is the control of base cutter height for a multiple row sugar cane harvester that avoids the above problems and is effective in dynamic field conditions.